Old Stuff Day - For the love of Spock

It's Old Stuff Day today, for bloggers to highlight a post or two deeper in the archive, that might not otherwise be seen.

Leonard Nimoy passing makes me feel mine could be this:

'The glad lightness of a far future and alterpluristemics'

The video also has Mr Nimoy giving some thoughts on the nature of Spock as a character, and clips from the episode.

Thanks to Miniature Musings of a Bear for the memory jog, and Rob at Warhammer 39,999 for setting it in motion four years ago, not to mention Nimoy for helping make old stuff like Trek some of the newest we've got, even decades later. Per The Secret Sun, where are the moon bases already?

The rot might have set in even while the original series was being prepared, if it is true it was Mariner-4 that rattled our confidence, showing us a Mars different than in the fiction.

And if you're a blogger, for any tabletop space, and want readers for newer posts too, maybe join the House.
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In the House, or hanging out in the shed for now...

Not content with one sporadic gig here, I have a first post up over at the House, probably the start of a weekly series looking at what the member blogs have been up to, and going off on tangents.

This one covers basing miniatures and how it can be seen as an element of roleplaying, plus a potentially hobby-shaking development in the understanding of what miniatures might be, then representing low gravity in games. There's some interesting discussion in the comments as usual.

It's also worth saying that if you're a blogger and not a House member, but you want a bit more traffic, have a think about joining up. The info's all here. There's no widget to add and the essay is just a joke, but you can play along if you feel like it. You don't even need to link back to the House or put up the network logo, but it might be neighbourly.

This could be especially relevant to your interests if you're primarily a roleplayer and the blog is listed with the RPGBA, which looks like ceasing operation in a couple of months.

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Petty Gods and trivial concerns

With the fair range of readers this blog seems to enjoy, from various areas of gaming and beyond it, not every reader with a potential interest might know about the status of the Petty Gods project.

Short version: Greg Gorgonmilk is taking over and calling for submissions old and new.

Long version: Petty Gods was a project inspired by Blair here at Planet Algol and set moving by James Maliszewski here at Grognardia. The idea was to source descriptions of obscure gods with game stats suitable for old school fantastical roleplaying. In simple terms, a bit like The Unknown Gods meets Terry Pratchett's Small Gods. There's an example here. Entries were sent and art created, but it seems layout was never finished.

Grognardia is one of the oldest blogs associated with the OSR, a movement of gamers interested in early forms of roleplaying, and especially early Dungeons & Dragons. For a few years the blog was one of the major hubs, a source of information, reflections and arguably revisions on the early years of D&D and tactical roleplaying as a whole. A significant part of the structure of current thinking in the OSR, and therefore quite possibly also the next official edition of D&D, may well lead back to, or through, one or more of James' posts.

James has been quiet for some time, apparently for personal reasons, leading to debate on the exact status of his as yet unrealised Kickstarter megadungeon, Dwimmermount.

It also seems to have contributed to a fin-de-siècle sense the OSR is out of steam, but this analysis seems not to recognise the breadth and depth of the movement. To judge by the response to Greg's first post, compared to James' say, the concern looks off the mark. It's a transfer: not an end, more an End. Petty Gods seems to be a rallying point.

Once again then: Greg Gorgonmilk has stepped up and is now accepting submissions.

If you feel this old school aesthetic and have a petty god worthy of praise, or can draw one, you can play a part. Start a religion, get published and change history in one move.

Update: A stop on gods for now, but various items are still needed - see Greg's sidebar.

Update: Greg has just linked to what he's calling Original Petty Gods, the first edition.

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Game stores, House of Paincakes and your blog too

Loquacious has answered my question at House of Paincakes on what she thinks boosts game store creation and helps a store thrive, and what a keen community could focus on. She's a store owner too so if you have an interest in the future of tabletop gaming at the tabletop, have a read.

This is also a good time to remind people of what HoP is: a major blog network with a strong but open authorial voice and excellent regular writers. Any blog on tabletop gaming can join, right here.

The blog rolls are heavy on wargaming right now, but that will change if a wider range of blogs join. If you want to spread the word about the kind of game you like, go and do it.

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Towards a new model army?

Many of us feel that certain areas of wargaming can be pricey, some areas increasingly and unreasonably so. A handful of posts from the past few days suggest ways forward.

• James S at Warp Signal proposed the not-so-alien notion of army sharing...

• Matt Plonski at Apocalypse 40K described wargaming online with Vassal.

• The guys at Dark Future are reorganising their blog to highlight work in the wider community like tutorials, reviews of alternative bits and conversions.

• Loquacious at House of Paincakes followed up the OGL post and wondered about extending community licensing to other game systems and settings.

• For 40K especially, Tales of the Maelstrom posted a lead-in for tomorrow's festive meet-up, blending Rogue Trader's use of a GM with wide group play.

Interestingly, BoLS this week posted some homebrew, which I think is the first time in a good while. It's a full mission, like those Creative Twilight produce, possibly a step into a new golden age, and Loken reminded us of the first and its magical Lords of Battle pdf.

Then they danced down the streets like dingledodies

I've been lucky enough to receive a blogging award from Frontline Gamer, along with four other blogs. All of them are very deserving of it: it's worth taking a look if you haven't yet.

Like FG, I do have some reservations about the rules, so rather than name the five more blogs I recommend as winners, I'll just say go have a browse through the blogrolls in the left-hand sidebar. Those blogs are my recommendations and they deserve the attention.

But I am also going to suggest a few blogs that probably don't get much attention at all.

When we check a blogroll most of us probably start at the top and work down to the last posts we saw, but beyond are blogs that have been abandoned or gone on hiatus. These can represent years of excellence. And very nearly no one reads now. It's almost painful.

So here are just a few of those, representing various subjects. They're listed in order of period to the last post, longest to shortest. I recommend spending some time with each one, reading a few posts and taking in the wonders, especially if you never knew them.

Slight Foxing
ix
Riskail
Blighty Waaagh Boys
Rustfoot
Cook and Destroy
 Port Maw

 Studio Cyberlab
Double 0 Sven
The Secret Sun

I am serious - hopefully there's something for everyone in that batch, and there could be days of pleasure and learning just clicks away, benefits of the work those bloggers have put in. And these are just a sample of what's waiting deep in blogrolls all over the place.

The passage in the title is from Jack Kerouac's On the Road, and there's more of it here.

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Full of beans, out of spam

It's been quiet here the last two or three days, but I haven't been far away. I've done some relevant reading and worked on a few projects, including the ongoing resolution system and an unusual conversion that might be good for INQ28 or InquisiMunda. Most of that will turn up here sooner or later.

I've also made a change to comment settings. The number of spam comments has been going up and the time taken to trawl through them all was getting seriously out of hand.

Frontline Gamer is managing it by turning word verification on and anonymous comments off, but I'm not willing to do the first yet based on this intriguing claim, for the lack of clarity about who gains from the work commenters do. There's more on the theme here.

Instead, given that most of the spam was posted with the anonymous option, which was rarely if ever used otherwise, I've only turned that off. I'm not so happy about doing it, but it seems the lesser of the evils for now. So far, so good - there's been zero spam since.

If you do want to comment and this change means you can't, just email me the text with permission to post it. If you can see any other solutions to the problem, don't hold back.

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Conan, Frankenstein's monster, trenches and Chaos

Looking through blogs here and there today, and at subjects being discussed - Conan, Frankenstein, trenches, Chaos - I get to wondering: am I a barbarian, built of reclaimed bits of popular culture, hiding away from an outer inner darkness I won't face? Are you?

Here's some recommended reading: read the future. Start by reading between the lines and it's not so hard to do. There's a lot going on in between those lines. Read the future and if it's not escapism you're getting, it might be worth deciding - can the you of today live in that world? Because if we don't put in some work between those lines, ourselves, we might just end up so well adapted to that future we won't even know what happened.

Might just get a sense of something not quite li-  But still, play the games we played as kids, read and watch the same things, as if nothing happened. Nothing happened. As if.

Just breaking one or two fifth walls - or maybe a sixth?

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Find that blog!

It's been quiet at the blogs lately. Not so many people are posting, and not as often as they did, and it seems there aren't so many newer blogs either. A lot of posts seem related directly or not to all those Chaos marines, or Dwimmermount, or new monsters.

(I'm not digging the new Chaos for various reasons, on the subject of Dwimmermount I like empty space, partly for this reason, and I love homebrew stuff like the monsters.)

I'm guessing it's just the cold and the darkness, an autumnal, getting-back-into-college blip. Trouble is, this could set off a downward spiral of less reason to check in, less jumping from blog to blog, so less traffic and fewer comments as positive reinforcement, which could mean bloggers spending more time away, or elsewhere, or just moving on.

In case it isn't the time of year, and to brighten things up, I want to enlist the help of one of the most consistently stimulating gaming bloggers I've had the pleasure to read. The posts are in my view generally excellent, often very rigorous and at times highly personal. They push the limits too. The person likes the games that many of us do, and is knowledgeable and engaging, and a theorist and philosopher. So who is it?

Appendix OSR (2)

I've been reading The Secret History of Star Wars on a now mysterious Marcia Lucas and thinking.

Thinking it's another good text for that reading list.

Thinking we may think we create, and do, but not so much as we might like to think we do. We can hold worlds in our heads (with art or miniatures to help maybe, and numbers etc.), but mostly these are variations on this world even when they're not.

And how well do we actually know this one..? Or each other's version? Do we even know our own?

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Trickster, Trapper, Sniper, Spy

This idea was prompted by a comment Sidney Roundwood left and a post at Gothridge Manor.

It's an alternative, live-action game to play at an event, for when gamers are posting photos of themselves in advance to help in meeting up and plan to take more when they're there to post later, as often happens. It also lets some protect their real-world identity if they want to or need to. I'll call them all posters.

It's simple. Everyone carries a camera and the idea is to take a clear photo of as many other posters as possible; other individuals in shot are considered innocent victims and reduce counts at an agreed ratio. Posters protecting their identity are a special case - they play the sniper end of the spectrum and can have other posters in the frame only.

Queues for entry and planned meet-ups are 'safe havens'. Zoom is allowed as it raises risk of blur, but cropping not. The pics are posted after the event and numbers totalled, and popular opinion decides quality if there's doubt, with all but the sharpest discarded.

It could add a real frisson to the event, more of the tension of actual struggle. It's funny more gaming events don't arrange overarching games, or weave them into the structure, maybe using ambient random or similar methods. With so many gamers in one place...
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For more sting in the tail...

Look what Jedediah found...

Javascript folds. You can see them used to hide spoilers at this post at Book Scorpion's Lair - another fine write-up, on a Cthulhu by Gaslight session - but it could do even more, like break up long posts without forcing a full reload. More reason to join the menagerie.

But be careful if you do try it - better safe than sorry when it comes to template code...

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Are we helping an AI learn its ABCs?

Pause for thought re commenting verification. If this new system is getting us to identify hard-to-read words - see here - we may be part of something needing more discussion.

In this article, on a modified history of the computer, Freeman Dyson's son tells us:

In 2005 I visited Google's headquarters, and was utterly floored by what I saw. "We are not scanning all those books to be read by people. We are scanning them to be read by an AI," an engineer whispered to me.

It makes perfect sense, if we want to make the fictions real. But do we? And which AI? How soon? Whose vassal will it be - or is it? What do we all owe to a lifeform like this, and - getting back to the mundane - what does it mean for our use of the verification?

At novums we get a reminder of where this could be going re Isaac Asimov's "The Last Question", but that's one of the more optimistic views, and the literature has others.

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Appendix OSR (1)

I caught up with the latest articles at Orion's Arm today. There's one on attention economics and another on money in post-scarcity economies.

We're not post-scarcity on Earth yet - all of us at any rate - but the tabletop gaming community as represented online, when online at least, does to some degree resemble that kind of association.

So what do we do with all the potential we have?

Even if we don't get a wider discussion going just yet, it can't hurt to build up a useful reading list...

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Piracy, slavery and crimes with no name yet

I just wrote a focused and fairly raw gaming-related rant, hopefully a transformative one; almost posted the thing too. But I'm channelling the energy elsewhere. Too much to do.

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Gargants and a rant

You might remember I was hoping to post an expansion this weekend for that hive interior supplement I put together for the Heroes of Armagedon project, a set of homebrew rules for games inside gargants. Exciting idea, right? For me, for sure. I was very happy with the result, all the more so because it took me right back to the early '90s and the Epic system, with power fields, boilers and fires, even escaped squigs.

Trouble is, I'm not in the habit of backing up drafts. Can you guess where this is going?

If you're a Blogger blogger you probably can. When I came back to the draft to make the final changes I found it was down to the introduction only. All the mood and rules text was gone. As far as I can see, except for that failure on my part - trusting the software - the fault lies entirely with Blogger. I've waited and it hasn't returned. Does anyone believe it ever will? I do have an earlier version I can build back from, but I don't want to think how long that will take. I may well do it, and feel I should, but not right now.

The next paragraph is a rant, so feel free to take your leave here.

What is it with Blogger? It may be free for most of us - if not necessarily a labour of love for Blogger's owners - but there are certain minimums we might expect with the service offered. That near-day outage with so little info was pretty rough, as was the vanishing of posts and comments and odd returns. The problems many bloggers have been having with commenting is arguably worse. A solution was doing the rounds a long time ago (uncheck the 'stay signed in' box at login), but why do we need to spread the word on that? How often do we have comments eaten? The first and possibly only time I tried using the post timer, it ended in loss of a past post and the hard work of others in the comments. This past few days my and other bloggers' stats have been highly unusual, and based on the discussions I've seen and had, they look in large part to be junk. In my view it's a mess. Well done Von, and anyone else who moved away.

I've already taken steps towards independence. It's all but ready to go, but I don't want to jump just yet. There's a lot more to do at the Expanse. When I leave I want it to be much more than just a switching of platforms, more than a step forward only for me; I'd like to offer an open door to many. I'll talk about that another time.

To borrow a metaphor, gargants may be reduced to scrap, but that's building material.

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Commenting trouble - a solution

It seems a glitch is stopping some of us commenting on blogs. If you're having trouble and haven't seen a solution to it yet, Warpaintguy has an illustrated explanation here.

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The power of ideas

I admire Sidney Roundwood at Roundwood's World, and I'd bet you do too, or will as soon as you visit the blog. I think he has what many of us aspire to, a full approach.

He's done me the honour of building on a post I wrote a couple of months ago, Getting out of the boat (1), a post representing a part of what the Expanse is all about. He used the ideas in a Great War battle over his superb trench boards featuring a mix of rules.

This and one or two other things currently in the pipeline have left me in a happy stupor.

Why?

Setting aside even the fact that it's Roundwood and others I respect, I think it's about seeing a contribution recognised, its value acknowledged, and in blogging knowing something hasn't just fallen by the wayside. It's understanding in some small way we've added to the sum of thinking and experience.

Every one of us who creates, suggests or speculates in whatever form is contributing just like this. We all do it in some way, and it's a very precious thing. And key I think in keeping the passion high and keeping the contributions coming is feedback.

If you see something good out there in the blogosphere or elsewhere, I'd encourage you to use it, respond, praise the positives and help improve the rest. Leave a comment, write a post, recommend it, especially if the source has a smaller audience.

Get involved in the exploration. If you're not sure where, start with the blogrolls here.

Thanks again to Sidney and to everyone who's run with an idea they saw here, and most of all to everyone beginning, continuing or supporting that wider exploration in any way.

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Keep plugging or pull the plug?

The Stylish Blogger nominations have died down now I notice. But how? Surely they multiply until the internet collapses? Have they left our part of the blogosphere? Did they get deleted by Blogger last week?

Wherever, after the dust has settled I have five more to turn the mind to. I'm very grateful to John Lambshead, jabberjabber, Ricalope, James S and Brian for thinking the Expanse is worthy of them, and especially for the generous words that were written.

But what to do now? After the first from The Angry Lurker I passed the award on to 15 blogs, and very gladly, but if I do that five more times, that's 75 more blogs nominated.

Can Blogger hold up? Can we?

I do want to nominate more, and would willingly nominate even more than I can. It's fair more of the great blogs out there get the attention they deserve. That said, I realise patience, time and probably also value have been stretched. Should a break of some kind be made? Maybe there's a more intelligent approach I just can't see?

I've been looking, but no revelations. Any thoughts?
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We're back, almost

Things are up and running again, superficially at least, but there's posted material still missing. I'm assuming Blogger has this somewhere and will be restoring it soon.

If you're not sure what's going on, neither are most of us; Blogger has been read-only for the best part of the last day, with surprisingly little information forthcoming.

An argument for looking into Wordpress, or even a personal domain and hosting? Free service or not, there are options, and the paid options needn't be expensive.

In the meantime, the posting schedule here is out. If this has published and all looks stable, I'll start catching up.

Update: I have my missing posts back. There was one problem I could see, the addition of some odd characters to the labels. I deleted these, but when I published the changes the posts became the latest, as if published for the first time, and comments were lost.

Update: I've just found another post lurking unpublished in the editor which I'm fairly confident I had actually published; now it's up for sure. Worth having a rummage.

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